Palladium gets its tax relief from city

Tuesday

Oct 16, 2012 at 11:00 AMOct 16, 2012 at 3:29 PM

The owners of the Palladium have been successful in getting some relief from the 229 percent increase in the assessed valuation of the downtown entertainment venue. The dramatic increase in the assessed valuation prompted the owners to consider razing the building..

By Nick Kotsopoulos TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The owners of the Palladium have been successful in getting some relief from the 229 percent increase in the assessed valuation of the downtown entertainment venue.

Acting on an abatement application filed by the owners,the city has reduced the assessed valuation of the property from $2.26 million to $1.65 million, according to City Assessor William J. Ford.

In terms of dollars and cents, the $613,100 reduction in the theater's property assessment will reduce its annual real estate tax burden by $17,823, or more than 25 percent, based on the commercial tax rate or $29.07 per $1,000 valuation for fiscal year 2012.

Under its initial assessed valuation for fiscal 2012, the annual property taxes on the Palladium were $65,887. But with the reduced valuation, the annual real estate taxes for the property have fallen to $48,064.

That is still more than double than the $23,863 the owners of the Palladium paid in real estate taxes the previous fiscal year, when the theater's assessed valuation was only $688,700.

John C. Fisher and John L. Sousa are the co-owners of the Palladium.

They had previously made no secret about their unhappiness over the dramatic increase in the Palladium's assessed valuation.

They said the dramatic increase in the assessed valuation of their property made it extremely difficult to financially operate the theater, so much so that they petitioned the Historical Commission in July for a waiver to the city's demolition-delay ordinance for the Palladium based on an economic hardship.

The waiver would have allowed them to avoid having to wait one year before being able to proceed with demolition.

The city's demolition delay ordinance sets an automatic one-year delay for the demolition of historic structures so owners can have time to look into alternative uses.

The Palladium is not on the National Register of Historic Places, but it is on a list compiled by the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System of structures considered to be historically and architecturally significant.

The Historical Commission ended up denying the petition for the waiver to the ordinance, saying the owners failed to prove their economic hardship. Members of the commission have called the Palladium a structure of cultural and historical importance.

The assessed valuation of the .42-acre parcel the Palladium sits on at 255 Main St. remains unchanged at $198,800. Assessors, however, did lower the valuation of the four-story building, which has 52,873 square feet of space in it,from $2.067 million to $1.454 million.

The theater opened in November 1928 as the Plymouth Theatre and operated as a movie house and a performance venue for vaudeville acts and musicians.

The building was renamed the E.M.Loew Center for the Performing Arts in 1980and Mr. Fischer and Mr. Sousa purchased the building in 1990. The Palladium has operated for many years as an all-ages performance venue.

The building also has office space on all four floors,but there are currently no other tenants. It also used to have a bowling alley in the basement.